Trauma Healing
A Path to SOCIAL justice and gender Equality
In the wake of war and conflict, women bear the heaviest burden. Often survivors of gender-based violence with little or no access to financial resources, training, and the support needed to heal from trauma, they may find themselves working in isolation to reclaim their vitality and creativity, or advance their own plans for community repair. As the primary designated caretakers of families and communities, women have deep insight into root causes of entrenched issues facing society. They are crucial partners in defining priorities for improvement - whether in families, communities, or national government. Unfortunately, their voices often go unheard.
Rebuilding a just and inclusive society in the wake of conflict involves meeting a complex set of needs, among them:
availability of social and financial resources;
opportunities for the marginalized to have a voice in the rebuilding process; and
trauma-healing, ethical leadership, and prevention of the re-creation of inequitable power systems.
Mind-body trauma healing plus the opportunity for women to form groups and create community-based organizations to advance social change represents one of the most effective and holistic approaches towards individual and community healing during post-conflict reconstruction.
For this reason, Global Grassroots integrates an evidence-based trauma-healing method, called Breath-Body-Mind© (BBM), in our core Academy for Conscious Change curriculum. BBM includes simple movements, meditation, and a particular pace of breathing called Coherent Breathing, that together help restore balance to the nervous system. BBM combines scientifically proven techniques to rapidly reducing stress, anxiety, sleep problems, as well as other symptoms of post-traumatic stress. This unique breath practice results in relaxation across the autonomic regulatory circuits, the emotional regulatory centers, and the higher thinking centers of the frontal lobes. As a result, BBM has immediate positive effects, such as an increased sense of calmness, and longer-term effects including increased stress resilience, reduced inflammation, improved cardiovascular and respiratory function, resolution of trauma, improved relationships, reduced anger, improved emotional regulation, improved attention and learning, healing and recovery from chronic ailments, and improved academic and artistic performance.
BBM represents over 40 years of medical research carried out by Dr. Richard Brown, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry from Columbia University in New York and Dr. Patricia Gerbarg, Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at New York Medical College. After several years of scientific study and practice, Dr. Brown and Gerbarg distilled the method into an easy to learn three-part program. This method has been used successfully with tsunami survivors in Southeast Asia, hurricane survivors in the US, earthquake survivors and first-responders in Haiti, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria, former sex slaves in South Sudan, 9/11 terrorist attack first responders in NYC, and combat vets, among others.
Through our Academy for Conscious Change, we have witnessed first hand the power of this process. To date, across Rwanda, Uganda, Liberia, Cameroon, Kenya, the US, South Sudan, and beyond, we have trained 903 change agents who have designed 238 “micro-NGOs” while simultaneously exploring the potential benefits of trauma-healing practices such as Breath-Body-Mind. Participants report finding a deeper sense of purpose, patience, and empowerment as they exercise their rights, freedoms, and newly-mastered skills as conscious change leaders.